The present disclosure relates to communications, more particularly, to tracking area list management in a long term evolution (LTE) femtocell network.
The next generation wireless mobile communication system requirements include stable support of multimedia service as well as a voice/data service. For example, 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) has been designed to guarantee a high quality service at a high data transmit rate, such as, about 100 Mbps as a downlink data transmit rate and about 50 Mpbs as an uplink data transmit rate. Such a signal quality and a data transmit rate of a LTE network generally deteriorate in an indoor place such as home, office, and building because of obstacles such as walls, windows, and even furniture. According to statistics, demand of about 40% of voice services and about 70% of data services are at indoor places in a 3 G communication network. Therefore, research has been made to improve a data transmit rate and a signal quality of a wireless communication service demanding in the indoor places.
For improving the data transmit rate and the signal quality in the indoor places, a femtocell has been introduced. The femtocell may be a base station for an indoor location. The femtocell connects a user equipment to a core network through a broadband network (i.e., Internet network) installed in indoor places. Such a femtocell is generally installed in a shadow area for expanding a service area. Further, such femtocell can be easily installed a desired location through a provided plug and play scheme. Accordingly, the femtocell may be a solution for improving the communication service quality with a low cost.
In order to manage user equipments located in a femtocell, a mobility management entity may be required to track locations of user equipments in the femtocell. In order to track the locations of user equipments, femtocells are managed based on cells and tracking areas (TAs). Particularly, a location of a user equipment in an active mode may be determined based on cells. However, location of a user equipment in an idle mode might not necessarily be easily determined based on tracking areas (TA). A related communication service provider may optimally set such tracking areas in consideration of various factors including location registration load, a paging success rate, and paging load.